I Feel So Old
 

I'd consider myself a gamer. I think I can hold my own in certain areas of gamerodery without delving too much into fanboyism. (And yes, I know that most of that sentence did not consist of actual words) For instance - I love FPS. I do. My favorite being Half Life 2 - the plotline snapped into place, the visuals and effects looked amazing, and it was really fun to play.

The first FPS I ever played was Wolfenstein, then Doom (and who could ever forget XIII?) - but where it really gets interesting was when I discovered Tribes. A truly and utterly fantastic game. It was my first MMO, and I found a server I could live with and always had fun screwing around. Now, I recently found Tribes: Vengence for sale - cheap! I thought I'd get a few rounds in and have some fun. This was not the case.

I relearned some old tricks and picked up some new ones - the visuals and gameplay had evolved, maturing as I believe I have. I thought I had found MMOFPS heaven. After messing around in a story mode (a brand new feature, by the way. Whoo!) I decided to try multiplayer. To learn some of the new maps, I chose a vacant server, free of players, and started poking around.

Eventually the enevitable happened, and someone joined me on the server - we started to duel and I started to get back into the swing of things. We got to talking - and before even saying "Hey!" the player invited me to his clan. Just like that. I knew nothing of the game, and declined his offer, and we continued dueling.

Now, it is at this point in the thread that I should mention that one of my favorite FPS weapons is the Sniper Rifle. Using the weapon in my endeavors, the other player told me that they didn't like Snipers. Apparently sniping is "gay." I mention that "gay" is not a negative adjective - and he asks how old I am. I tell him that I'm 18, and he respons "i'm 11," and then as another player joined, he proceeded to ask her to join his clan, then spammed various phreases in leet.

I for one, was shocked - where had the comradery and companionship that I had known in my earlier days gone? I'm saddened to think that this is an epidemic. I have never really believed somone could or would spam invites, leet or any other such thing - I thought, for lack of a better word, "noobs" were just made up to scare adult, mature gamers.

Now - make no mistake; I am all for the younger generations getting into gaming as soon as they can hold a controller, but this is going too far. For those parents that are computer literate, I urge you to not let your children grow up to be noobs. I'm starting to notice gray hairs, and I think about the younger days when noobs actually used full sentences and spoke kindly to their betters - you have to admit, there was a politeness when low-level gamers asked for free stuff. Now it seems that in order to play an MMOFPS, you have to have an IQ lower than your shoe size.

Please, please, please do not let your children grow into leet, ubar masters of the gaming world. My poor, aging heart can't take it.

I have nothing to add really, I'm just nitpicking your spelling.

Camaraderie.

No, really! I actually had to look it up myself.

Okay I'll say something on-topic.

Eleven-year-old boys are now, have always been, and will always be the filth of the earth.

Man, amen to that. I hang out with people who love "Zelda", and by "Zelda" they mean "Ocarina of Time, Why, Are There Other Zelda Games?"

And this is before Twilight Princess, so you can chalk it up even higher on the I'm Getting Old O'Meter.

Shit I'm only twenty-one, I was raised on Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, and I still feel like a crotchety old-timer yelling at kids to get the fuck off my lawn with their Wiis and Playstations Threes.

If I could offer one piece of advice, sunscrean would be it.
 

Ah I remember my tribes day fondly. How that thing ran near perfectely on my modem was amazing.
Fortunately I live in a basin full of students and all my friends are at least as old as me so our gaming peak was around the same time (mid 90's).
I still spend a lot of time on my porch though and do yell at kids who run up and down our street. They make so much noise!
Edit: Yay this thread helped me get one of our young forumites to download Tribes 1 and play it, one who has not played it before. Super awesome! This forum is empowering!

There are 18 year olds who talk like that online, as well, you know. So what I'm saying is there is no hope. The best you can do is actively look for gramatically correct people to play with, and not join people's clans who go around spamming. So you've taken the correct course of action thus far.

At least the little twerp spelled gay correctly, after all. He didn't call you ghey.

For the most part if your stick to competetive leagues you'll be alright, though CS:S is plain old full of your typical Newbs, and for that reason (and the pathetic gameplay) I avoid it. Tribes in all of its older forms as well as Red Faction (the first one) remain two of my favorite shooters.

I haven't yet played CS:S - I'm more inclined to MMORPG's, as I healy/buffy classes are always available, and I can have a normal conversation with someone who remembers Pogs and Orbitz, and not be turned off because of grammar difficulties.

I stick to Counter Strike these days and frequent servers heavy in active administrators. That usually solves my problems, that and the lovely mute feature for voice... ahhh the bliss of being able to hear footsteps!